Scintilla
by medleypond
Summary: Scintilla, n.: a tiny, brilliant flash or spark. An Amy/Eleven coffeeshop AU. Rated M for future chapters.
1. Cosmic

**A/N:** When I say AU, I mean it. I'll be hinting at canon, definitely, but don't expect me to parallel the canon arc. This is, first and foremost, a fun fic.

* * *

The night shift sounded better, more romantic and mysterious, in the middle of the morning rush when it was nothing but vanilla pump, caramel shot, leave room for milk but for god's sake don't put that soy stuff in.

The night shift, Amy Pond decides, is thoroughly unromantic.

She's been sitting at her post — or rather sitting, standing, pacing, whatever the moment warrants — since ten o'clock, and aside from a rather gropey couple and Mr. Fredrickson from the hardware store, she's been talking to an empty shop.

She kicks the cabinets behind the register and flicks the pumps with her fingernails like she's playing chimes, trying to remember how she got roped into taking these hours. Not that it's the first time; sometimes she feels like she came to the big house only yesterday, like everyone is still treating her like the ginger girl with the funny accent and the funny dreams.

But Richard knew she'd take the hours. He knows she needs them. Needs the money.

A sharp buzz echoes in the shop for a moment before she realizes it's her phone, and then she picks it up from the far end of the counter. (She thought Rory'd fallen asleep; his last text read_Two boxes left, I'm knackered_.)

MELS (10:30): _Wish oyu were here getintng pissed isn't muhc fun wothut Pond_

God, Mels. Probably getting all the rowdies to buy her shots — she's good at that. Cat-eye liner (the kind that makes Amy look ridiculous, but Mels has those big shiny eyes, so it works), the way her voice seems to lower to (appropriately) something like a purr around the boys.

She deftly taps out a response: _Go home before you end up in a bed you've never seen xx_

It's only been a few seconds of cleaning her fingernails before her phone buzzes again.

MELS (10:31): _ive seen em all xxxxxxx_

Not altogether inaccurate, Amy thinks wryly. It's not that she's worried about Mels, really; the other girl's gotten them both out of more sticky pub situations than she can recall (literally; blackouts are not fun). Still, she'd take a killer hangover, the kind that stabs you behind the eyes and between your ribs, over sitting in this damned shop and deliberating between keeping the stupid indie soundtrack on for company or sitting in creepy silence —

The bell on the door tinkles, and she jerks up, heart hammering.

The first thing she notices is his hair, possibly because it's wet and hanging down around his eyes; he looks like a puppy caught in rain. He's breathing pretty hard, blue button-up unbuttoned and partly exposing a chest that would hurt to look at, she thinks, if the shop didn't have "mood lighting".

"Something to drink," he says hoarsely, coming up to the counter. "Give me something to drink."

She would like to tell him that it's a good idea to treat the person making your drink nicely, what with the possibility of poison, but he looks so out of focus and so urgent that she says nothing, goes to the machine. She blanks for a second, but her hands move on their own and she ends up whacking on the settings for a small black coffee. _He needs it, by the looks of him._

He's still standing there, still breathing like he's just run up and down the High Street twice (she wouldn't be surprised, in his state). There's a manic sort of glint in his eye that makes her wonder just how much he's had and why he's got no one with him — he looks around the age to go hollering through the square with his mates.

The weirdest thing about him, though, is that she has no idea who he is. For Leadworth, that's weird.

Still without a word, she hands him the coffee, fingers just on the point of burning when he takes the cup from her. She clears her throat. "That's two pounds eighty."

He says nothing, only sniffs the coffee rather dramatically before taking a sip.

And promptly gagging on it.

He slams the cup down on the counter in front of them, and Amy jumps back even though, given the cup's paper, there's no real force behind it.

"What," he chokes, "is _that?_"

Amy stares at him. "...Coffee?" She gestures to the menu on the wall behind her. "Kind of our specialty round here, if you hadn't noticed."

"It's _disgusting_," he says, his features twisting not just in disgust, but as if he's somehow surprised. "What else have you got?" He squints at the menu. "How about a… makeeto? Gimme one of those."

It takes her a few seconds to realize he meant a _macchiato, _but she doesn't have the energy to correct him_. _She moves to the machine again, turning a couple of knobs and starting the milk foaming while keeping one wary eye on him. He's a live jack-in-the-box, seeming to spring on the balls of his feet without otherwise moving; the hem of his shirt bothers her a little, only half tucked in and unevenly sewn, from the look of it. _Is his mum making his clothes? _He's scruffy, ragged. _Raggedy, _she thinks delightedly. That works.

The foamer hisses and she snaps back in, pouring the milk haphazardly (she doesn't really think foam consistency is much of an issue at the moment) before grudgingly pushing the cup halfway across to Raggedy. _He can reach, if he's so keen._

He does, and she's almost surprised — almost — when he sputters violently and flecks of milk polka-dot the counter between them.

"_Terrible! _Awful!" he spits. "Haven't you got anything I can _swallow_?"

There's a thick foam mustache on his upper lip that he's apparently too distracted to notice, and Amy has to take a moment to stuff down the laugh rising in her throat. When she finally speaks, her voice is lower than she remembers it being just a moment ago.

"Let's find out, shall we?"

With a bit of a flourish, she flips three more switches on the machine and layers the bottom of a new cup with a shot of caramel. She grins, and after a moment, tentatively, so does Raggedy.

* * *

The smells in the shop would be enough to dizzy a perfume maker: coffee, caramel, hazelnut, cocoa, and the sharp lemon rising from the rag in Amy's hand.

She's been cleaning the same circle of counter for the last five minutes, watching him with the winning cup going from counter to hand to lips. She doesn't know how she could have possibly been on the brink of sleep an hour ago, and she's sure the insides of her knuckles are permanently welted with the shapes of every switch and knob.

"This is good," he says, and the delight in his voice echoes off the ceiling, the walls. "It's… really good. _Cosmically_ good." His hair has dried a little from whatever shenanigans soaked it, and it springs up from his forehead and over in a floppy sort of arch. Amy traces it with her eyes, a snigger escaping her.

"Cosmically, huh. You a writer or something?"

Raggedy laughs too, a sound at once impish and rumbling in his throat, and Amy doesn't need to look to know there are goosebumps rising on her forearms. "Nah, not even close. I just like telescopes."

"You the sort to look into windows, then?" She can't keep the laughter from her voice.

He looked scandalized and puts the cup down. "What? No! For stargazing. Why would you think that?"

He's so earnest in how stricken he is, so childish, almost, that it takes her aback. She shrugs. "Dunno… just guessing?"

"Well, it's a terrible guess — er —" His eyes fasten on her, and he suddenly gets up and moves two stools closer to her end. "I don't — I'm sorry, I haven't gotten your name."

"Amelia Pond." She doesn't know why she's just given her full name to a wild-eyed stranger, so she amends hastily, "Amy, I mean. Just Amy."

He hasn't heard her, or chooses not to. "Amelia Pond! That's lovely. Lovely name." He looks down at his drink. "What's in this, Amelia?"

An answer sputters and dies in her throat, and she clears it briefly. "I, erm. I don't… remember."

"You don't remember?" He looks flabbergasted, and then, so quickly it throws her a little, his features settle casually. "Oh, well, I can't blame you. I don't remember my eleventh try of anything either."

She raises an eyebrow. "You've been keeping track?" He seems like the type, though — despite the hair, the ears that stick out, and the stupid rumply shirt, there's some sort of mad precision to the way he moves. She nods, a challenge. "Go on, then, tell me what's in there."

Obediently Raggedy sips again, and she smiles as he swishes it around in his mouth, cheeks alternately blowing out to hamster size. He swallows. "Vanilla. Coffee. Milk? A lot of milk."

Ah. "That's a latte, mate." There's a sputter in her brain as it reprocesses her words and his, and she grins. "A _cosmic_ latte, if you like."

His grin mirrors hers: broader, if it's possible, and the motion of his face makes his ears look even bigger. "Cosmic Latte, hm. I do like!" His smile fades a little and he leans toward her. "So, Amelia, what're you doing here so late on a Friday?"

She exhales heavily. "Night shift's the worst, but I got stuck with it."

"Handling it pretty well, by the looks of it," he answers, smiling almost gently. "Bloke runs into the shop late at night, same bloke makes a mess of your kitchen, drinks a latte…"

_He thinks I can handle it. _For some reason she's immensely pleased, but she manages to just shrug. "Kinda glad, though, not like I sleep much anyhow. Means I don't have to tiptoe around worrying about waking Aunt Sharon."

"Your aunt?" He's looking at her carefully now, thoughtfully, as though he's afraid she might break. What about your parents?"

_Oh, hell. _Damn him, what is it about him that makes her say these things? "I — my parents are gone." He makes a sound and immediately she interrupts, "No, it's okay, really. It was a long time ago." Her fingertips sting suddenly, and she looks down to see that she's been gripping the rag so hard that the lemony cleaning stuff must have made its way under her nails.

She swears once under her breath and moves to the sink — it gives her a welcome opportunity to turn her back on him and calm herself, running hot water over the backs of her hands. "What about you? Whereabouts are you?" She pauses. "I haven't seen you in the village, not that I remember."

"Yes, I'm… I'm not a regular." There's a strange tilt to his words, stiff almost. Like he's being careful again, except this time about himself and not her.

She wipes her hands on another rag and starts to turn back around — midway there, she glances at the clock and stops. Half past midnight? That can't be right. "Well, shit."

"What?"

"I —" She looks back at him, and damn it, she wants to laugh again for some stupid reason. "I was supposed to close up shop half an hour ago."

"Why, what — " He turns to look, too, and the change that comes over him is immediate and a little scary. "Oh, no, I — I've got to go!" In his haste, he knocks over his cup; what little of his latte was left flows out onto the polished counter. "I'm sorry, Amy, I really am, I've just got to —" His hair flops around ridiculously as he stands, and the hem of his shirt comes fully untucked.

It billows around him like a sail as he sprints through the door.

Amy stands motionless, staring at the little tan pool on the counter. For a strange, suspended moment, the only thought that comes through is, _I just wiped that down, the sod._

And then she feels herself come back, and she's running to the door, hollering, "Oi! Come back here! You didn't even…"

She stands in the doorway of the shop, looking down the village main street. Nearly everything is quiet and dark now, except the faint green glow of the pharmacy cross and, farther down and fainter still, the whoops from the pub. England must have won the match, she thinks absently.

She was going to say, _tell me your name. You didn't even tell me your name. _But what comes out of her mouth, in a small, defeated puff, is "pay."

The warm summer night air falls on her like a blanket, but there are goosebumps rising on her arms again when she looks down the street empty of any raggedy silhouettes, and whispers, "You didn't even pay."

But it's not the two pounds eighty that Amy Pond gives a damn about.


	2. Twelve

For the next few days, Amy goes back in time ten years: she's the Scottish ginger with an imagination too broad for Leadworth.

She regrets telling Steph now, the twat — she'd even thought of it, at the time, as a method of bonding, seeing as she kept to herself in the shop. Come one — tall, fit, slightly mad stranger comes into the shop in the middle of the night, she's the only one on duty?

"It's something out of a film," she'd told Steph eagerly. She'd rolled her eyes a little. "Maybe a horror flick, but that's not the point."

Maybe _too_ much like a film, Steph had apparently thought, because the next thing Amy knew she was hearing sniggers, feeling stares when they thought she wasn't looking.

"Looking for someone?" Nate had asked innocently one morning as she was headed over to serve a table. When she turned to him, the corners of his mouth twitched. "Someone… raggedy, maybe?"

Amy had reached for the tray he was holding, and gained some small comfort from the way he winced when her acrylics scraped his knuckles.

* * *

Day five. Yes, she's been counting.

The teasing's died down, thank God, she was starting to feel like her days were a repeat of nursery years. But still she feels strange, lost, remembering his jerky, giraffe-like movements in the utter stillness of her and Aunt Sharon's rare meals together.

But she flinches every time her aunt asks her about her day, every time a customer reads her name tag out loud (Rich insists on having the place sound "adult," whatever the hell that means).

Sometimes she wonders if those three dropped letters weren't more of a loss than she'd first thought, all those years ago.

* * *

Rory, sweet, stupid Rory. Amy is always caught between wanting to kiss him and wanting to hit him.

"Maybe he was a hitchhiker," he offers when she finally tells him — even he could tell something wasn't quite right, and Rory's pretty oblivious. (Though that may just be because Amy's quite good at keeping a straight face.) She's sitting on the end of his bed as he weighs shirts in his hands (occasionally asking for her input) and rearranges his suitcase.

Amy snorts. "Without a knapsack? Without anything, actually, he had nothing on him."

Rory shrugs apologetically, as if it's his fault that they don't know anything more. "Might've been visiting a mate for the weekend, you know."

She can't imagine why anyone from anywhere else would want to come to Leadworth, even for a weekend. It's an attempt, at least, she thinks dully. He goes on, but she's staring at the nearest box, she's not listening anymore. The black marker on the box bores into her eyeballs, and when she kicks it, some part of her rings hollow with it.

When he suggests they stalk the pub for a couple of nights, she brushes it off almost immediately, hot, sweet shame coloring her cheeks.

* * *

On day twelve, a Wednesday, the sun is only just brushing across the church and hospital roofs on her walk across the square. Even the first whiff of coffee, dark and smoky and warm as she walks in, doesn't do much. She rubs leftover sand from her eyes as she ties on her apron, adjusts her T-shirt.

The next couple hours of sorting boxes in the storeroom, the AC blasting prematurely, does the trick. (It's only June, for God's sake, she thinks grumpily, they're still stuck in rain half the week).

She loses track of time, forgets minutes and hours and starts thinking instead in terms of coffee kilos and frozen pastries wrapped in cellophane.

All too suddenly, Steph comes pushing through the curtain. "Amy?"

Amy shrieks and drops the box she was holding, right on her big toe. She and Steph stand in a (literally) painful silence for a few seconds, and then she manages, "Just — gimme a sec."

"There's a customer asking for you." Steph's expression is unnerving, somewhere between anxious and curious.

"Asking for me?" Amy repeats dumbly, and then wants to curse herself for it. All that blood rushing to her foot, she must have a shortage of working brain cells or something.

Steph shrugs and leans against one of the massive coolers. "He asked for some weird thing, not off the menu — a Cosmo Latte or something? —"

Amy's heart seems to shake in her chest, and her toe throbs a little more intensely. She sits carefully on the nearest crate.

"—and I told him we don't serve alcoholic drinks, you know, and he sort of just looked at me and asked if Amelia Pond was on shift." Steph laughs uncomfortably. "You haven't called yourself Amelia since we were about what, twelve?"

Amy looks at her carefully, her insides still writhing. Is it a joke? Something they've all planned, is this why they've all been so quiet the last few days?

Finally, realizing the length of her silence is approaching weird (one more label she doesn't need), she clears her throat and stands. "Right. Right, er… I'll be right out."

When Steph nods and ducks out again, she near collapses onto the nearest box. It can't be. It just _can't._ And besides, she shouldn't, not after the mess it's ended up giving her.

She finds herself breezing through the storeroom doorway anyway.

At first she's afraid to look for some stupid reason; afraid that Steph _is_ faking her out, maybe, that they were all right and she'd just fallen asleep that night.

She looks.

His profile in the front window is made almost absurd by that mountain of a chin — was that even there that first night? How had she not noticed?

He's shed the unkempt blue shirt for a neat white one today, sharp black suspenders framing the brick-red bowtie at his throat. _Who the fuck even wears bowties anymore?_

She feels herself suck in a breath as she takes a notepad from the pile behind the counter and starts picking her way around the tables.

He's still looking out the window when she gets to him, and she stands in silence for a few seconds before saying sharply, "Oi."

He turns, and the way he grins is like Christmas come early. "Ah, Pond! So you _are_ here! I asked the other girl about that latte, but she —"

"It's Amy," she interrupts, impatience flaring like a match.

"What?"

"I told you, it's Amy. And the thing I made you, it's not on the menu." There's a hard lump just above her breastbone; swallowing only makes it hurt. "Twelve days."

His smile fades minutely, and his brows draw together the smallest bit. "Amy — "

"Twelve days and two pound eighty," she amends. "Could've at least paid, or were you too pissed off your ass for that?"

She's attracted a couple of onlookers now; she can feel their eyes on her, can hear the stupid little teaspoons that have stopped stirring.

He's noticed, too; his eyes flicker quietly about and then settle on her. There's a moment he seems to wait for the attention on them to disperse, and when he speaks again, his voice is low, conciliatory. "Amy, I swear, I didn't mean to — "

"Put me overtime for a coffee you didn't pay for? Yeah, I'm sure." She takes a deep breath. Why did she let him get to her like this in the first place? It doesn't make sense.

"Oh, come on, Pond. Look, it was just late and I — " His expression is so lopsidedly sheepish that she's not sure whether she wants to laugh or slap it off his face. "I didn't mean to dash off like that, really I didn't." He smiles suddenly, as if he's had an idea. "Let me make it up to you."

"What's your name?" If she doesn't ask now, she's not sure she'll get the chance to again, given their past experiences.

He looks taken aback in a strange, gently hurt sort of way. "I — well, I'm William. Willie. _Will_," he says hastily, and for a moment she stares at him. It's as if there's more than one person in his head, and he has to decide which one to speak as. "Will," he says again, a little more confidence in his voice.

She leans in, letting the tiniest note of menace into her voice. "Well, _William" _— she formalizes it on purpose — "you've got a tab to pay, and that's quite enough making up to be starting with. Is that gonna be a problem for you?"

"Can I still have my latte?" he asks hopefully. _Unbelievable._

Amy turns on her heel and marches back to the register, notepad blank. She pushes through the storeroom curtain, and then kicks a crate of still-icy turnovers viciously.

It makes an equally vicious thud, and pain shoots up her leg. "Fuck!" She sucks air through her teeth and sits on the ground, nursing the renewed ache in her big toe.

* * *

About ten minutes later, she sends Steph to Table Seven with a neat, foamy white cup. She refuses to look over, but it doesn't take long before she hears a happy whoop, followed by a few audible slurps.

When she goes to clean the table, there's a ten-pound note on the saucer and an address scribbled in blue pen on the bottom of the receipt. She recognizes it, but what makes her smile are the three words underneath, in a surprisingly loopy scrawl.

_Come along, Pond?_


End file.
